Stages of Denial
by noenigma
Summary: An attack on the team changes everything.


Disclaimer: Purely for fan purposes; no copyright infringement intended.

Part One

"Whoa! What was that?" the colonel hollered as the last of the attacking creatures wheeled and flapped away. His team made similar comments around him. All but the major. He didn't notice her silence right away.

And that was not like him. Evaluating it later, he realized he must already have been in denial.

Even when he said, "Everyone all right?" and she didn't immediately chime in with Teal'c and Daniel, he hadn't been alarmed. He'd been far less than alarmed. He hadn't even noticed.

Yet, he must have known. He'd been aware at least two of the creatures had attacked her position and had careened over his head from there when they'd been beaten off. And he hadn't failed to notice she'd cried out at some point or another in their brief skirmish.

Even so, when she said, "Colonel," he didn't register any urgency in her voice, though it must have been there. He'd stared after their departing attackers as they disappeared into the clouds another beat or two before he'd turned to see what she wanted. Some hopelessly scientific observations of the beasts no doubt, nothing to worry about. That was what he'd been expecting when he looked around at her.

Yet, he had known. He had to have. Because he hadn't run an appraising eye over her checking for injuries like he already had the others. He'd barely even allowed his eyes to flicker to her face before he was scanning the sky behind her for incoming. He hadn't wanted to know, hadn't wanted to see. But, he had to have known.

"Sir," she said, and he grunted a 'go ahead' without looking in her direction.

Yet, he'd seen it. In that brief second he'd glimpsed her face. It was a look he knew well. He'd seen it before. The shocked, disbelieving look of the fatally wounded before the pain hit, while their minds and hearts were still catching up with their body's understanding that they weren't walking away from this one. That this was their final battle, their last day.

"Colonel," she said one last time and, this time he could no longer help but notice how weak her voice sounded. Still, when he turned from his survey of the sky it wasn't to look at her but at Teal'c and Daniel. They'd wandered back the way they'd come, toward the Gate, gathering up their scattered supplies and equipment. They were too far away to rescue him from this moment, this place.

He thumbed his radio. "Dial the Gate," he ordered. "Tell Hammond we need a med team standing by." And then finally, with Daniel's alarmed questions squawking unanswered from his radio, he looked at her.

She was still on her feet. Her arms clamped tightly against her chest. Heart level. Her right hand pushed through a slit one of the creatures' talons had ripped right through her flak vest. There wasn't much blood…she'd been able to clamp it off with her arms; it couldn't be all that bad then. That was what he was thinking as he took the three steps to her side. He put a steadying arm around her and placed his other hand over hers.

"Easy, Carter," he said as he eased her to the ground. "Let me see," he ordered, but he had to fight to pull her trembling arms away from the wound so he could assess the damage.

It was that bad.

The wound went right through the chest wall. Through the ribs and sternum and into the chest cavity. The amount of blood was staggering. It had run down under her vest and soaked the front of her pants. His mind had refused to see it, but it had been there the whole time he'd attempted to deny reality. Now it bubbled out of her chest, and he couldn't stop it.

He groaned and pushed his hands into the wound to stanch as much of it as he could. It wasn't enough. Nothing would be enough. Under his fingers, her heart frantically beat on in an erratic galloping desperation that couldn't last.

He glanced up from the blood welling out around his hands and found she was still conscious. His first instinct was to lie to her. To assure she could beat this, to deny the oh-so-obvious truth. He'd lied to the dying before, promised them a tomorrow that wasn't coming, assured them they were going to be fine. And they'd all, one way or another, let him know they weren't fooled or comforted…the lies were for him.

He owed her more than that. Much more. "You've really done a number on yourself," he said instead and she almost smiled.

Daniel arrived with a breathless, horrified, "Sam!"

"Daniel," she amswered weakly as he plopped down in the dirt beside them. It was the last thing she said.

Under the colonel's hands, her heart slowed and then stopped with a small jolt as though she had stepped on the brakes a little too hard.

"Carter!" he yelled and began chest compressions. Or, at least, he attempted to do chest compressions. There was nothing to work against…the broken rib cage provided no leverage and his hands slipped in and out of the gaping wound in her chest. Blood spurted up around his hands, but he doubted any of it was moving through her circulatory system to keep her vital organs oxygenated. Still, what could he do but continue?

"Daniel," he gasped out, "breathe!"

Daniel shook his head against the futility of his actions and said weakly, "Jack." He didn't begin artificial respiration, and that, if nothing else, should have convinced O'Neill of the hopelessness of the situation. Not that he didn't already know.

He did. God help him, he did. But he wasn't ready to give up on her. He realized he would never be ready to give up on her. They would have to drag him away from her dead body before he stopped.

And then everything changed.

Part Two

Over his own ragged breathing and Daniel's desolate silence he heard it coming. The sound of wind and the distant chiming of bells. Oma coming to take her from him. He glared up at the swirling, twisting tendrils of light approaching and it stopped.

"You've come to take her then?' he asked between compressions. Not in anger or relief. In resignation. He could hear it in his own voice, but his arms still pumped in as steady a rhythm as he could manage. There was a part of him that was resigned to her loss, but it wasn't the part that desperately continued trying to keep the blood flowing to her brain, trying to keep her with him.

The solemn face that flickered and solidified in the midst of the light was not that of Oma Desala, but Orlin. The voice that answered him from the light was as resigned as O'Neill's own, "No. You hold her heart in your hands, Colonel. She will not come with me as long as you do."

"What's that supposed to mean?" he snapped at the apparition. "I thought enlightenment was all up to the one being enlightened. It you're going to take her, take her! I can't stop you. If you're not—how about a little help here?"

The light shifted closer and one golden, shimmering tendril stretched out from it and flickered towards Carter's open chest. It flitted around his hands, and he froze in mid-compression.

"Don't stop," a voice said, and he couldn't tell if it was Carter's, Orlin's, or his own. He began to pump again. He'd lost the count. Not that it mattered. His efforts, sporadic or steady, were less than useless. Still, he went on.

The light flitted in and out of Carter's chest. It went around and over and through his trembling fingers. He could see it, but there was nothing to feel. No heat, no electrical charge, or magical tingling. Just her blood, hot and wet and torrential. It ran down her sides and turned the dirt beneath her into a red, malodorous mud, and still it didn't stop.

And neither did he. Her body jerked with the force of his efforts, and the ends of the broken bones ground roughly against one another, and he saw with horror that her eyes were still open and alert. Her heart and lungs had long since given up, but Carter herself was still in there somewhere: seeing it all, understanding it all, watching her own death. It wasn't right. It was more than anyone should have to endure. But he couldn't find the words to stop Orlin or the strength of will to end his own frantic efforts.

Neither could he dredge up the words or strength to offer her any comfort or reassurance. Daniel was there for that. He held her hand, smoothed the hair from her eyes, and murmured quiet, gentle words O'Neill couldn't hear. Was he telling her to hold on, she was going to make it? Her journey was not yet over. Or was he telling her how to ascend? How to leave him? Whichever, Daniel's words seemed just as ineffective as his actions. And Orlin seemed to not be faring any better; if he was making any progress it wasn't readily apparent.

They were frozen here on this forsaken planet. Trapped in this moment somewhere between Carter's life and death. What had Orlin said? "You hold her heart in your hands, Colonel. She will not come with me as long as you do."

Was that it? For any of them to escape this nightmare did he have to choose to let her go? Daniel had come to him, asked him to let him go, to make them stop their attempts to save him. Maybe Carter, too, needed that from him.

He'd known one day he'd have to let her go. Sooner or later, someone who could offer her the world was bound to show up, and he would have to let her go. Because he had nothing to offer her, and she deserved so much more. He could have done that. At least, he'd always thought he could. He'd always believed when the time came, he'd do it. 'If you love someone let them go' and all that.

But, maybe that too had just been him fooling himself. Certainly this…how could he let her go like this? Eventually, his arms would give out. Eventually, he'd collapse over her dead body. But, to willingly stop, to willingly let her go? He didn't think he could do it.

Even though he believed he should. He couldn't save her; Frasier couldn't save her even if he could get her through the Gate. Her injuries were too extensive, her blood loss too severe. She was dead. Only his desperate desire to hold onto her kept her here. It did nothing but prolong her agony. Better to let her ascend, let her become whatever it was she would become. Let her go and hold onto the hope she'd find a way back to them like Daniel had.

Even if she didn't ascend, who was he to keep her tied to this brutalized body? To hold her in her pain and horror to this life when her time was so obviously up. No one who claimed to love her could do such a thing. But then that was the last thing he would claim even though it was the truth. Or he'd believed it was until now, when she so desperately needed him to act on that truth and let her go and he wouldn't, couldn't do it.

He looked into her wide, terrified eyes and struggling for the air to continue his efforts and get out the words said, "I can't…Carter. I'm sorry."

Daniel, misunderstanding the reason for his apology, said through the tears filling his throat, "You've done the best you could, Jack…it's not your fault."

She couldn't answer herself, of course. There was no air in her lungs for speaking. Her eyes gazed into his, but if her answer was in their depths he couldn't read it. And then they closed and the life left her face, and he thought that was it. He'd hesitated long enough it was no longer up to him.

Only he was wrong. "Don't," her voice said from the other side of her body. It was strong and vibrant and very much alive. He, Daniel, and even Orlin all turned in surprise and saw…what? A vision, an apparition, her spirit? Whatever sort of manifestation it was, it was whole and healthy and its eyes beamed with life. She was alive.

Only, of course, she wasn't. Involuntarily he looked from it to where she lay dying under his hands. She looked at last like she should have, like the empty, dead shell of the woman she'd been.

He turned back to whatever it was that stood on the other side of her dead body and gasped out, "I can't. I want to…I do. But I can't. Help me!"

"You don't have to," it said. "I don't want you to…hold on. Hold on a little longer." And then it was gone. They all stared after it, even Orlin who had paused whatever he was doing to hear what it had to say. For a brief instant they were all frozen in time, and the only movement was the pumping of his arms and the heaving of his lungs as they fought for more air.

And then, under his hands her heart gave a tentative beat…and then another.

"Keep working," he ordered the Ascended Being, and the tendril of light began to flit in and out of her chest again. He stopped the chest compressions for fear he'd throw off her own weak efforts, but he kept his hands there ready to begin again if she couldn't sustain the exertion. Beneath them, he could feel her heart beating stronger and steadier.

She took a ragged breath and after a long pause another. And then she gasped in air with a desperation that shook her body.

"Easy, Carter," he panted in return. "Easy. You're going to be ok." As though to prove him right, her wounded tissues began to come together. He felt them first; then he saw them. He watched in amazement as the light wove in and out of the ribs and joined the jagged, broken pieces together. In a moment, the muscle and skin knit under his hands and where there had been a gaping wound there was now only a small cut across the center of her chest. A thin, red line of blood oozed from it. Nothing at all like the torrent he'd struggled to hold back earlier.

The tendril pulled away from her and retracted back into the center of the light. Orlin's face frowned down at them without any jubilation or celebration in it.

"The others are not pleased…I can do no more. Perhaps it will be enough. The others will not undo what is done," he said, and then with the wind and far off bells, he was gone.

Jack frowned after him. "Thanks," he called belatedly before turning back to Carter. The miracle Orlin had wrought in her chest hadn't touched her face. She looked anything but alive. She was though. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo in her chest and her breath continued to come in quick, shallow gasps. Orlin's words echoed in his ears, "…perhaps it is enough." Of course, it was enough. It had to be.

He looked to Daniel for reassurance, "Not exactly the picture of health yet, is she?"

"We've got to get her home," Daniel said urgently.

As if on cue, Teal'c's quiet and composed voice came over the radio. "The Gate is open, O'Neill. Do you require my assistance?" O'Neill and Daniel stared dumbly at one another. They'd forgotten Teal'c, the Gate, everything but what had been playing out there before them.

"Teal'c," O'Neill rasped out, "how long…how long since I ordered you to open it?"

"No more than three minutes, O'Neill." Again he and Daniel exchanged looks. He would have guessed it to be hours. The muscles in his arms and shoulders insisted it could possibly have even been days…but minutes, three minutes? They couldn't take that in.

"I am concerned the creatures may return…we should not tarry. Do you require my assistance?" Teal'c went on.

The creatures. They'd forgotten them and the possibility of their return as well. "No! Keep the Gate open…we're on our way!" Jack hollered into his radio. In a frenzy of activity, they gathered up their injured teammate and made a dash for the StarGate.

Part Three

The SGC's chief medical officer always appreciated a heads-up when casualties were expected so she could actually be ready with stretchers and emergency equipment on hand in the Gateroom. It beat running willy-nilly through the halls while someone bled out on the ramp.

Still she hated the waiting. That time from the call until her patient or patients appeared in the Gate was nerve-racking to say the least. Especially as the SG teams were trained in only the most basic of first aid and able to give her only sketchy information at best about what to expect. All too frequently not even that as they were often dragging their wounded along with them as they made a run for their own lives under enemy fire.

In this particular wait, she had next to nothing to help her make her preparations. Teal'c knew nothing except the colonel had ordered him to request a med team…he presumed the injured party was Sam, but he didn't even know that for certain.

Some sixth sense made her call for the techs to pull out blood in Sam's type, just in case. Later, when she knew the score, she would wonder if Orlin had somehow tipped her off, because blood was too easily tainted and too costly to have on hand in the Gateroom for just any old emergency. She'd never called for it 'just in case' before.

Yet, when SG-1 burst through the Gate with Sam limp and white between them, the blood had been waiting along with the bags of plasma. She didn't have to even get out her stethoscope to see that it wouldn't be wasted…

Though it was a procedure that should have been performed in a sterile surgical room, Frasier carried out a subclavion cutdown right there at the base of the Gate. She simply didn't have the luxury to do otherwise. If Sam survived long enough to reach the infirmary, she'd pump her up with enough antibiotics to kill a horse and cross her fingers.

With fluids running into her friend as fast as she dared push them through, she began a thorough assessment of Sam's injuries and found…a superficial cut across her chest just below her bra line and some newly forming bruises that told her someone had performed CPR on her out in the field. There was no indication of internal bleeding, but all too much of a massive hemorrhage from an unknown exit point. She and her team exchanged puzzled looks and then turned to the rest of SG-1 for an explanation.

"What happened out there?' she demanded.

Teal'c stoically met her gaze, but she already knew he was woefully uninformed. Daniel and the colonel blinked blankly at her from chalky white faces. Running a practiced eye over them and their stained, bloody clothing, she knew their condition was not from injury but shock. It was Sam's blood that had soaked the colonel's sleeves and had turned the dirt beneath them into the mud that had stained the knees of their BDUs.

She left Sam's side to go to them. "Sit down. Both of you," she ordered, and they more or less collapsed where they were at the bottom of the ramp. "I need to know what happened out there," she said. When neither one of them seemed to recognize that was their cue to fill her in, she mustered the sternest voice she had and barked out, "Colonel! Report!"

He closed his eyes against whatever he'd seen out there and swallowed hard. "Um…Orlin. It was Orlin," he said in a harsh and low voice. "He…did whatever he did. Closed up the wound. It's gone."

The doctor frowned down at him and looked back at Sam. "We're dealing with only one wound?" she asked but she'd lost him again. "Colonel!" He gave a startled jump and blinked at her. "Was there only the one wound?" she asked again.

"Um…yes. It was…bad. Real bad. Orlin though…it's gone now. She's ok, right?" he asked and suddenly his eyes were clear and intense as they drilled into her.

She winced against the raw need she read in them, but she answered truthfully, "She's not out of the woods yet…how was she injured?"

"Some kind of …flying thing."

Daniel for the first time shook off his daze to add, "Not a bird…nothing like that. Dragons. They were small dragon-like creatures…came out of nowhere. With razor-sharp talons."

The colonel nodded his head, and they both shuddered at the memory. O'Neill stared over at Sam and said, "One of them—it cut through her rib cage like it was butter. Her heart…it was going for her heart." Daniel covered his face with his hands and hunched into a ball over his knees.

Janet turned to some of her med team and called for blankets. She thought that both of the men had had enough. Unfortunately, she wasn't quite done. "How long was she…" compromised was the word that came to mind, but they were too fragile for her to put it so boldly. She settled instead for, "bleeding?" If either of them heard the fear behind the question, they were past reacting to it.

"It seemed like forever," Daniel said, his answer muffled by his knees.

Teal'c narrowed the time down for her. "The attack was no more than five minutes before I opened the Gate, Dr. Frasier," he said. Five minutes, and at least that long before they'd come through. She turned away so they couldn't see the bleakness in her eyes.

It had been too long…the damage to the brain would have been severe and irreparable in that amount of time. She looked across at Sam and several of her team looked back at her. They had heard, and they knew as well as she did what it meant.

DNR—Do Not Resusciate…let the end come quietly and soon. Don't prolong it, don't fight it. Let it happen here among friends who could still picture her sharp and alive with intelligence and joy. Not after years of nonlife in the back wards of an extended care facility surrounded by people who had never seen her eyes light up with discovery and wonder, people who knew nothing of a vital and alive Samantha Carter.

"Let's get her to the infirmary," she said as soon as she could choke down the sorrow washing over her. There was no longer a need for the rushed urgency that had kept them from moving her before. Anything else they did for her- the sponge baths, the careful positioning, the IV care, the thorough neurological exams that would one day or another put an end to all of this-would be unhurried and gentle. In the fight for her life, they'd exposed her without concern before everyone in the Gateroom, but from here on out, everything they did would be to preserve her dignity. That was the way they dealt with their uselessness and failure. It was as ineffective as all the efforts to save her had been.

Janet glanced back at the shattered men she'd left at the base of the Gate. "Get them warmed up and clean. Then bring them to the infirmary," she ordered.

Though she'd meant if for some of her staff, it was Teal'c who inclined his head and said, "I will, Dr. Frasier." She nodded an acknowledgement because she thought the activity would be as therapeutic for him as for the other two. The colonel and Daniel were still too far out of it to understand what had just happened, but Teal'c was not.

She leaned down to take her end of the gurney, and Sam blinked her eyes open. Janet turned her face away, unwilling to see nothingness in Sam's eyes. Though she would refrain from writing the DNR order on the chart until after she'd performed a neurological assessment, nothing she'd seen in Sam or heard from the men had given her any reason to hope Sam could still be in there somewhere. Orlin may have closed the wound, but he certainly hadn't done a thing about replacing the massive blood loss. Unless he'd magically infused her vital organs with oxygen, her friend was dead. They were just waiting on her body to get the message.

Considering where she worked and the sort of things she'd seen in her years there, she perhaps should have had more faith.

"Janet?" Sam said weakly. It was so quiet that Janet thought she'd imagined it until Sam reached out a blood encrusted hand to touch Janet's arm. "Janet?" she said again.

"Sam?" she cried, and she and her med team stumbled to a halt there in the middle of the hallway.

"It hurts, Janet…I…I…ddidn't Orlin?"

"Yes. Yes. Orlin healed your wound."

"Then why does it still hurt?"

"I don't know, Sam…we're going to get you to the infirmary and find out, all right?"

"Ok," Sam said in resignation, but she had to bite back tears of pain as they rushed through the halls.

"Sam, can you tell me where you are?" Janet asked, too impatient to wait until they reached the infirmary before beginning her assessments.

"Level 28, main hallway."

"Nothing wrong with you there," Janet said with a relieved smile. "Know what day it is?"

"Umm…is it still Monday?"

"Sure is. Do you know what happened out there?"

"The colonel," she swallowed hard before going on, "he…he wouldn't let me go. Orlin…wanted to take me with him."

"Did you want him to?" Janet asked weakly. She had never reconciled Daniel's loss to ascension…it had been just as big of a failure for the doctor as he death would have been. She understood intellectually that ascension in the end had made it possible for him to return to them, but…she'd failed to save him either way.

"No," Sam answered and there was no uncertainty to hear in her answer. "He said I had to let go of everything…and…there…are things I wasn't ready to let go."

Part Four

By the time the members of her team were allowed in to shuffle around her bedside, the major was knocked out from exhaustion and pain meds. They should have been euphoric and exhilarated by her narrow escape, but they were far from it. It was a subdued and decidedly somber group that fingered her blankets and frowned at the monitors and avoided each other's eyes. One or another would reach out a hand as though to touch her but then they'd let it drop as though they didn't have the right.

It was not just the colonel who had missed the fact she was in trouble; neither Daniel nor Teal'c had bothered to take the time to make sure she was as uninjured as the rest of them. For whatever reason, they'd all failed her when she needed them. Orlin had intervened and kept her from paying the price for their casual inattention, but…none of them felt worthy of celebrating her escape.

Janet stepped around the curtain and misread their dejection as worry. She motioned them over and in hushed tones sought to reassure them with her report, "She's doing well. We'll have to watch for infection and we're pumping her full of antibiotics just in case, but—the scans are unbelievable. The scar tissue goes all the way through the ventricular walls, but there's no evidence of permanent damage. Her EKG is perfect. Fluid replacement is going to be the biggie, but again there's absolutely no sign of any organ failure or damage in any of the scans or the blood work we're getting back. She'll be back on the mission schedule before you know it."

They mumbled acknowledgements and wandered off with hunched shoulders and discouraged faces, and she shook her head after them in bewilderment. She'd had staff pull a chair over to Sam's bedside for the colonel assuming he'd be settling in for the duration, but apparently she'd been wrong.

JSJSJSJSJS

Sam woke biting back cries of pain and terror.

"Easy, Sam," Janet told her softly from the chair where she'd been sitting filling out her paperwork. "You're home…you're safe." She wet a washcloth and gently wiped the sweat from her friend's face. Sam's breath came in short desperate gasps. "Are you hurting?" Sam nodded her head but couldn't force out an answer. "Ok…we'll get you something."

Later when the meds had taken the edge off the worst of the pain, Janet gave Sam the same encouraging report she'd given the guys earlier.

"Then, why does it hurt so much?" Sam asked.

Janet shrugged. "I think…it's going to take you some time to adjust to having survived. I think it all happened so fast and so…miraculously that you haven't had a chance to accept it."

"You think it's all in my head."

"No. That's not it. I'm talking at a much deeper level than psychologically. This is more on the par of phantom pains after an amputation…it's not a matter of how well you're handling what happened or anything like that. There's uh…cases in the literature—I guess I'd say it's more neurological than anything.* Your brain knows how badly you were wounded, and it can't believe it's all over."

"Janet, I've been dead before and didn't feel like this after the Nox brought me back."

"I know—"

"And the guys…they've woken up in the sarcophagus feeling fine."

"Sam. We're talking you, right now…there's nothing in your scans or medical exam that explains the pain you're having. We'll keep watching, but I really think you're ok. I just think your body needs some time."

"Right."

"Hey," the colonel said peeking around the curtain. "You're up then? Well…not up up, of course, but…awake and all that?"

"Come on in, Colonel," Janet said and gave up her seat to him. She gathered up her papers and ducked around the curtain.

He folded his lanky form into the chair and looked her over. "So, doing ok?"

"Janet says I am," she said. She was suddenly overwhelmingly tired, and she didn't know if it was because of the meds, the blood loss, or because her world felt much more secure with him there beside her bed.

"You have some doubts?"

She mumbled an incoherent denial, and he laughed at her. She forced an eye open to attempt a scowl in response.

"Talk to you when you wake up," he said easily and pulled his yo-yo from his pocket. She faded off to sleep then. He watched her quietly. He had something to tell her. Something that for years he'd acted as though if he just didn't acknowledge it, it would go away. He'd been wrong about that. The more he denied it the stronger it had become.

Just like what had happened on the planet. He'd refused to see what was happening and lost them precious moments in saving her life. Moments that might have made a difference. All because he'd denied what he didn't want to face.

He'd knelt there in her blood with her heart in his hands, and he'd determined that he was done denying the truth.

JSJSJSJSJSJSJ

She woke biting back cries of pain and terror, and he recognized her short desperate gasps and knew she'd been back on the planet desperately fighting for oxygen and life. "It's all right, Carter," he told her and leaned over to awkwardly hug her. "It's over…it's over." His embrace and words quieted her breathing, but it took another dose of pain meds to beat back the pain.

"So," he said when the worst of it seemed to be past her, "Doc says you can eat whenever you feel up to it. Teal'c's on standby with the Jello—just give the word."

She managed a weak smile for him. "I think I'll pass."

"The meds?" he asked, and she nodded her head. "Doc could give you something for that I bet."

"No, I'm too tired to eat anyway."

"Blood loss will do that to you."

"Suppose so."

"Need anything else?"

"I'm fine."

"Sure?"

"Yeah."

"Good," he said knowing he was stalling but not quite sure how to say what he had to say. "So, I talked to Hammond."

"Oh?"

"Yeah."

She sighed and took the bait. "About what, Sir?"

He dug his yo-yo out of his pocket and let it loose before he casually answered, "About us."

She blinked at him in surprise and a dulled disbelief before deciding the meds were messing with her head. If he'd said what she thought he'd said…he wouldn't be sitting there playing with his yo-yo, would he? No, of course not. "Us, Sir?" she asked him finally when he seemed content to let the conversation stall out why he rewound the string.

"Yep. I told him I was done playing around. I'd resign, take reassignment…whatever he wants."

She shook her head in an effort to clear it. "Sir…"

He set the yo-yo off again before looking up and grinning at her shocked, white face. "I told him I love you, and I plan to do something about it."

"Y…y…you didn't?" she asked and was sure he hadn't. The meds. It was the meds. She'd have to ask Janet for something else. He probably wasn't even there…this whole insane conversation was all in her messed up mind.

"I did."

She shook her head again, and he nodded his in return. "Why did you do that?" she asked.

"Because I do…come on, Carter, you're not dumb. You've known it just as long as I have-maybe longer." Well, maybe. She'd certainly suspected it long before he'd acknowledged it, but…she wasn't dumb enough to believe he'd ever jeopardize his place on the team by acting on it. Neither of them would. They both had a duty to perform and that was hard enough without saying the words out loud. Which is how she knew for sure this was all just a hallucination. Even in the room hooked up to that machine with their lives in the balance, he'd never actually came out and said it like that…

Still, just in case, she weakly protested, "Sir, you can't—"

"Sure I can. In fact, I've been trying for years not to, and I'm pretty sure not loving you is what I can't do. Loving you-I seem pretty good at."

The more he said it, the more she knew this wasn't really going on. Chances were she wasn't even awake. "You'd throw everything away for this? Why now?"

"Well, I'm not getting any younger. I'm looking at a desk sooner or later anyway."

Since this conversation wasn't really going on anyway, she felt safe in participating in its utter foolishness, "So, I shouldn't be too flattered you'd give it up for me?"

He grabbed the yo-yo in his hand and leaned forward intently. "You're worth it, Carter," he said and his sincerity made her blink and momentarily reconsider the possibility they really were having this conversation. "Besides," he said, "the job isn't getting any safer. Sooner or later…well, let's just say, I figure if you are hanging around for me, I might as well make it worth your while."

"You…you heard that did you?" she asked.

He gave her a self-satisfied grin that made her laugh despite herself. And what was the harm in it anyway?

"Oh, yeah," he said. "Your heart's in my hands and all that…so?"

"So?"

He shrugged and frowned down at the yo-yo as though intent on whatever trick he was unsuccessfully trying to get it to perform instead of her answer. "None of that really matters. I've already talked to Hammond; I'm out of here one way or another. The only real question is what you're going to do about it."

"Oh yeah," she repeated him. "Like that's ever been in question."

"I was hoping you'd feel that way about it, but…I could get down on my knees if you want."

"Right here in the infirmary?" she asked secure in the knowledge that this was just a drug-induced fantasy.

"If that's what it takes," he agreed easily.

She shook her head at him. "That won't be necessary," she said.

"That's good…so, I can go talk to Hammond? Tell him we're a 'go'?"

"Sure, you do that," she said with a small disbelieving smile on her lips which lingered as the meds finally pulled her once more down into sleep.

He watched her fade away and wondered if he could in good conscience really take that as a 'yes' knowing she was floating high on the meds. But, then that's why he'd come today while she was still vulnerable from her near death experience. This had been the day for this conversation, while the smell of her blood still clung to his hands and the fear he'd felt facing her death was still too fresh to be denied.

Tomorrow when her head was clearer, she would try to talk some sense into him: tomorrow when he'd had some time to regain his equilibrium, she might have a chance of doing it. Tomorrow might be too late. Seize the day and all that…goodness knew he'd been dithering about for far too long already. So…whether she remembered this conversation tomorrow or not he was holding her to it. They'd both been in denial far too long.

 _*At the time I started this story, I was reading a collection of the writings of Dr. Oliver Sack, particularly "A Leg to Stand On" which explores this type of perception…since I was torturing poor Carter again anyway, I thought I'd play around with the idea a bit._

2018 Author's Note: Like an artist stuck painting everything in blue picture after picture, I seem to have gotten stuck in exploring infirmary scenes in my writing. I wouldn't say I've ever quite worked them out of my system either as hospital scenes tend to show up in my Lewis stories from time to time as well, but this is by far my favorite of them all.


End file.
